Then I remembered the promise I’d made to Olivia.
“I—can I think about it?” I heard myself ask.
Guy looked surprised. “What the hell is there to think about?” he asked, thick brows crawling toward his hairline.
“A lot of things!” I blurted before I could stop myself. “This is my whole life we’re talking about, I just—”
“Are you kidding me?” Guy looked at me like I’d lost my mind entirely. It was the same look he’d given me at the studios on the very first day we’d met, when I’d told him I wasn’t there to audition: I’m giving you a chance, and only an idiot wouldn’t take it. “I’d be very careful what you say next, kiddo,” he told me, and his voice sounded very, very calm. “Because what it sounds like right now is that you’ve been wasting my time all fucking summer. And I know that’s not what you’re actually trying to say.”
“It’s not.” I felt my face flame. “I haven’t been,” I told him, struggling to keep my spine straight, not to wither under the force of his annoyance and disbelief. “Or at least, I wasn’t trying to. I want this more than anything. But Olivia and I made a deal. That it was going to be both of us, or neither.”
“You and Olivia?” Guy looked at me blankly. “What, on the tour?”
I nodded meekly.
“What the hell made you think that would fly?”
“I—” I didn’t have an answer for that. It seemed abruptly ridiculous now, like a plan we would have come up with when we were little girls to get Olivia’s mom to agree to a sleepover on a school night. “I don’t know,” I had to admit. “We just thought that since you’d been training us both, and we’re both good, it might make more sense to—”
“Why don’t you let me worry about what makes sense, all right?” Guy interrupted. “I gotta tell you, kiddo, you’re scaring me right now. Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said all summer? Look, if you’re going to do this, you gotta want it more than anything. You gotta want it with claws and teeth. You can’t be worrying about bringing your friend along for a twofer for fairness’s sake.” He looked at me across the desk for a moment. “So,” he asked. “Do you want it or not?”
I did want it, was the worst part. Of course I wanted to say yes. This tour was my only real chance to get out of Jessell, for a future full of hills and valleys instead of just flat gray nothingness. It was my only chance to be with Alex for longer than just right now.
But we’d made a pact.
Olivia’s friendship was the most important thing to me. It was the thread that had run through my whole life. It was what had brought me here to Orlando to begin with, the only reason I was even here. If I broke my promise now, what did that make me? It had to be both of us, or neither. A package deal.
“I can’t,” I told Guy finally. “I’m sorry. I can’t go without her. You don’t understand, we made a deal, and I—”
“Stop,” Guy said, holding a hand up to silence me. “You know what, just stop it.” He stood up. “I gotta tell you, kiddo, I’m disappointed. I thought I saw something in you. I thought you had what it takes.”
“I do have what it takes,” I argued. My heart was slamming against my rib cage, fear and adrenaline coursing through my veins. I was losing this, I knew it. I could feel it slipping away. “I just don’t want it without her.”
Guy shook his head. “I’ll have Juliet book you a flight out of here tomorrow, then,” he told me, sitting back down in his chair and lifting his hands like, what can you do? “Good luck out there, kiddo. I’ll tell you, you’re going to need it.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “After all that, you’re just kicking me out?”
“Like I told you,” Guy said, and just like that he was completely emotionless. “I don’t make mistakes.”
That was it, then. It was over.
So I handed Guy the binder back, and everything that went with it. I walked on shaking legs through the darkened studio and into the bright blinding light outside.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I drove myself back to the complex, a numb kind of buzzing in my ears like the humming of ten thousand wasps. Either that was the bravest thing I’d ever done, or the stupidest. More likely than not, it was both.
I stumbled up the stairs to the apartment, let myself in with two shaking hands: “Liv?” I called into the darkened living room. “Olivia, are you here?” I banged into her empty bedroom, heart pounding with urgency. I wanted to be the one to tell her what had happened, before Guy got to her, so that we could make a plan. I’d been caught off guard, I told myself. That was all that had happened. If we went back to him together, calm and ready, there was a chance we could still convince him to keep us both.
The apartment was empty; I paced around for a while, trying to figure out where Olivia and Charla might have gone. Girl Cat meowed at the open door, but I shooed her back outside. I looked at Olivia’s empty bedroom again, the bed she made so neatly every morning, everything in its place.
Somehow, that was when I knew.
I got back in the car and drove back to the studio, stepping on the gas with a heavy foot, not stopping to turn on the AC. I was sweating by the time I turned into the lot. I didn’t bother with a real parking spot, just left the keys in the ignition and threw the driver’s side door open. Charla was coming out as I was walking in.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, and I knew Guy had told her.
“Where’s Olivia?” I asked, and it came out more hysterical than I meant.
Charla shook her head. “I don’t understand you at all, Dana,” she said. “All the hard work you did all summer, the distance you covered. And you didn’t even want it?”
I ignored her, headed for the studio. “I need to talk to Olivia.”
“You shouldn’t go in there,” she called after me, but I wasn’t listening. I took the concrete steps two at a time, and made it into the cool, dark hallway just in time to see Olivia walk out of Guy’s office with Juliet and Lucas, the tour binder—my tour binder—in her hands.
My stomach lurched. I felt like I was seeing something that physically didn’t make sense, like the damn Loch Ness monster rising up out of some watery depths. “Oh, no,” I said uselessly, shaking my head. I turned around and walked down the hall toward the exit, slamming at the push bar so hard the door crashed into the side of the building. Olivia hurried after me, calling my name.
“Dana, stop,” she said finally, grabbing my arm in the parking lot, but I shrugged her off hard enough that she took a step back. It was hot out here; it was too impossibly humid. I couldn’t get any air in at all.
“Olivia.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else entirely. “What the hell are you doing?”